564 U.S. 338 | SCOTUS | 2011
Lead Opinion
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We are presented with one of the most expansive class actions ever. The District Court and the Court of Appeals approved the certification of a class comprising about one and a half million plaintiffs, current and former female employees of petitioner Wal-Mart who allege that the discretion exercised by their local supervisors over pay and promotion matters violates Title VII by discriminating against women. In addition to injunctive and declaratory relief, the plaintiffs seek an award of backpay. We consider whether the certification of the plaintiff class was consistent with Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(a) and (b)(2).
I
A
Petitioner Wal-Mart is the Nation's largest private employer. It operates four types of retail stores throughout the country: Discount Stores, Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and Sam’s Clubs. Those stores are divided into seven nationwide divisions, which in turn comprise 41 regions of 80 to 85 stores apiece. Each store has between 40 and 53 separate departments and 80 to 500 staff positions. In all, Wal-Mart operates approximately 3,400 stores and employs more than 1 million people.
Promotions work in a similar fashion. Wal-Mart permits store managers to apply their own subjective criteria when selecting candidates as “support managers,” which is the first step on the path to management. Admission to Wal-Mart’s management training program, however, does require that a candidate meet certain objective criteria, including an above-average performance rating, at least one year’s tenure in the applicant’s current position, and a willingness to relocate. But except for those requirements, regional and district managers have discretion to use their own judgment when selecting candidates for management training. Promotion to higher office — e. g., assistant manager, co-manager, or store manager — is similarly at the discretion of the employee’s superiors after prescribed objective factors are satisfied.
B
The named plaintiffs in this lawsuit, representing the 1.5 million members of the certified class, are three current or former Wal-Mart employees who allege that the company discriminated against them on the basis of their sex by denying them equal pay or promotions, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 255, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e~l et seq.
Christine Kwapnoski has worked at Sam’s Club stores in Missouri and California for most of her adult life. She has held a number of positions, including a supervisory position. She claims that a male manager yelled at her frequently and screamed at female employees, but not at men. The manager in question “told [her] to ‘doll up,’ to wear some makeup, and to dress a little better.” App. 1003a.
The final named plaintiff, Edith Arana, worked at a Wal-Mart store in Duarte, California, from 1995 to 2001. In 2000, she approached the store manager on more than one occasion about management training, but was brushed off. Arana concluded she was being denied opportunity for advancement because of her sex. She initiated internal complaint procedures, whereupon she was told to apply directly to the district manager if she thought her store manager was being unfair. Arana, however, decided against that and never applied for management training again. In 2001, she was fired for failure to comply with Wal-Mart’s timekeeping policy.
These plaintiffs, respondents here, do not allege that Wal-Mart has any express corporate policy against the advancement of women. Rather, they claim that their local managers’ discretion over pay and promotions is exercised disproportionately in favor of men, leading to an unlawful disparate impact on female employees, see 42 U. S. C.
Importantly for our purposes, respondents claim that the discrimination to which they have been subjected is common to all Wal-Mart’s female employees. The basic theory of their case is that a strong and uniform “corporate culture” permits bias against women to infect, perhaps subconsciously, the discretionary decisionmaking of each one of Wal-Mart’s thousands of managers — thereby making every woman at the company the victim of one common discriminatory practice. Respondents therefore wish to litigate the Title VII claims of all female employees at Wal-Mart’s stores in a nationwide class action.
C
Class certification is governed by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. Under Rule 23(a), the party seeking certification must demonstrate, first, that
“(1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable;
“(2) there are questions of law or fact common to the class;
“(3) the claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class; and
“(4) the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.”
Second, the proposed class must satisfy at least one of the three requirements listed in Rule 23(b). Respondents rely on Rule 23(b)(2), which applies when “the party opposing the class has acted or refused to act on grounds that apply generally to the class, so that final injunctive relief or correspond
Invoking these provisions, respondents moved the District Court to certify a plaintiff class consisting of “ ‘[a]ll women employed at any Wal-Mart domestic retail store at any time since December 26,1998 who have been or may be subjected to Wal-Mart’s challenged pay and management track promotions policies and practices.’” 222 F. R. D., at 141-142 (quoting Plaintiff’s Motion for Class Certification in Case No. 3:01-cv-02252-CRB (ND Cal), Doc. 99, p. 37). As evidence that there were indeed “questions of law or fact common to” all the women of Wal-Mart, as Rule 23(a)(2) requires, respondents relied chiefly on three forms of proof: statistical evidence about pay and promotion disparities between men and women at the company, anecdotal reports of discrimination from about 120 of Wal-Mart’s female employees, and the testimony of a sociologist, Dr. William Bielby, who conducted a “social framework analysis” of Wal-Mart’s “culture” and personnel practices, and concluded that the company was “vulnerable” to gender discrimination. 603 F. 3d 671, 601 (CA9 2010) (en banc).
Wal-Mart unsuccessfully moved to strike much of this evidence. It also offered its own countervailing statistical and other proof in an effort to defeat Rule 23(a)’s requirements
D
A divided en banc Court of Appeals substantially affirmed the District Court’s certification order. 603 F. 3d 571. The majority concluded that respondents’ evidence of commonality was sufficient to “raise the common question whether Wal-Mart’s female employees nationwide were subjected to a single set of corporate policies (not merely a number of independent discriminatory acts) that may have worked to unlawfully discriminate against them in violation of Title VII.” Id., at 612 (emphasis deleted). It also agreed with the District Court that the named plaintiffs’ claims were sufficiently typical of the class as a whole to satisfy Rule 23(a)(3), and that they could serve as adequate class representatives, see Rule 23(a)(4). Id., at 614-615. With respect to the Rule 23(b)(2) question, the Ninth Circuit held that respondents’ backpay claims could be certified as part of a (b)(2) class because they did not “predominare]” over the requests for declaratory and injunctive relief, meaning they were not “superior in strength, influence, or authority” to
Finally, the Court of Appeals determined that the action could be manageably tried as a class action because the District Court could adopt the approach the Ninth Circuit approved in Hilao v. Estate of Marcos, 103 F. 3d 767, 782-787 (1996). There compensatory damages for some 9,541 class members were calculated by selecting 137 claims at random, referring those claims to a special master for valuation, and then extrapolating the validity and value of the untested claims from the sample set. See 603 F. 3d, at 625-626. The Court of Appeals “s[aw] no reason why a similar procedure to that used in Hilao could not be employed in this case.” Id., at 627. It would allow Wal-Mart “to present individual defenses in the randomly selected 'sample cases,’ thus revealing the approximate percentage of class members whose unequal pay or nonpromotion was due to something other than gender discrimination.” Ibid., n. 56 (emphasis deleted).
We granted certiorari. 562 U. S. 1091 (2010).
1 — <
The class action is “an exception to the usual rule that litigation is conducted by and on behalf of the individual named parties only.” Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U. S. 682, 700-701 (1979). In order to justify a departure from that rule, “a class representative must be part of the class and 'possess the same interest and suffer the same injury’ as the
A
The crux of this case is commonality — the rule requiring a plaintiff to show that “there are questions of law or fact common to the class.” Rule 23(á)(2).
“What matters to class certification ... is not the raising of common ‘questions’ — even in droves — but, rather, the capacity of a class-wide proceeding to generate common answers apt to drive the resolution of the litigation. Dissimilarities within the proposed class are what have the potential to impede the generation of common answers.” Nagareda, supra, at 132.
Rule 23 does not set forth a mere pleading standard. A party seeking class certification must affirmatively demonstrate his compliance with the Rule — that is, he must be prepared to prove that there are in fact sufficiently numerous parties, common questions of law or fact, etc. We recognized in Falcon that “sometimes it may be necessary for the court to probe behind the pleadings before coming to rest on the certification question,” 457 U. S., at 160, and that certification is proper only if “the trial court is satisfied, after a
In this case, proof of commonality necessarily overlaps with respondents’ merits contention that Wal-Mart engages in a pattern or practice of discrimination.
B
This Court’s opinion in Falcon describes how the commonality issue must be approached. There an employee who claimed that he was deliberately denied a promotion on account of race obtained certification of a class comprising all employees wrongfully denied promotions and all applicants wrongfully denied jobs. 457 U. S., at 152. We rejected that composite class for lack of commonality and typicality, explaining:
“Conceptually, there is a wide gap between (a) an indi- . vidual’s claim that he has been denied a promotion [or*353 higher pay] on discriminatory grounds, and his otherwise unsupported allegation that the company has a policy of discrimination, and (b) the existence of a class of persons who have suffered the same injury as that individual, such that the individual’s claim and the class claims will share common questions of law or fact and that the individual's claim will be typical of the class claims.” Id., at 157-158.
Falcon suggested two ways in which that conceptual gap might be bridged. First, if the employer “used a biased testing procedure to evaluate both applicants for employment and incumbent employees, a class action on behalf of every applicant or employee who might have been prejudiced by the test clearly would satisfy the commonality and typicality requirements of Rule 23(a).” Id., at 159, n. 15. Second, “[significant proof that an employer operated under a general policy of discrimination conceivably could justify a class of both applicants and employees if the discrimination manifested itself in hiring and promotion practices in the same general fashion, such as through entirely subjective de-cisionmaking processes.” Ibid. We think that statement precisely describes respondents’ burden in this case. The first manner of bridging the gap obviously has no application here; Wal-Mart has no testing procedure or other company-wide evaluation method that can be charged with bias. The whole point of permitting discretionary decisionmaking is to avoid evaluating employees under a common standard.
The second manner of bridging the gap requires “[significant proof” that Wal-Mart “operated under a general policy of discrimination.” That is entirely absent here. Wal-Mart’s announced policy forbids sex discrimination, see App. 1567a-1596a, and as the District Court recognized the company imposes penalties for denials. of equal employment opportunity, 222 F. R. D., at 154. The only evidence of a “general policy of discrimination” respondents produced was the testimony of Dr. William Bielby, their sociological
C
The only corporate policy that the plaintiffs’ evidence convincingly establishes is Wal-Mart’s “policy” of allowing discretion by local supervisors over employment matters. On its face, of course, that is just the opposite of a uniform employment practice that would provide the commonality needed for a class action; it is a policy against having uniform employment practices. It is also a very common and presumptively reasonable way of doing business — one that we have said “should itself raise no inference of discriminatory conduct,” Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust, 487 U. S. 977, 990 (1988).
To be sure, we have recognized that, “in appropriate cases,” giving discretion to lower-level supervisors can be the basis of Title VII liability under a disparate-impact theory — since “an employer's undisciplined system of subjective decisionmaking [can have] precisely the same effects as a system pervaded by impermissible intentional discrimination.” Id., at 990-991. But the recognition that this type of Title VII claim “can” exist does not lead to the conclusion that every employee in a company using a system of discretion has such a claim in common. To the contrary, left to their own devices most managers in any corporation — and surely most managers in a corporation that forbids sex discrimination — would select sex-neutral, performance-based criteria for hiring and promotion that produce no actionable disparity at all. Others may choose to reward various attributes that produce disparate impact — such as scores on general aptitude tests or educational achievements, see Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S. 424, 431-432 (1971). And still other managers may be guilty of intentional discrimination that produces a sex-based disparity. In such a company, demonstrating the invalidity of one manager’s use
Respondents have not identified a common mode of exercising discretion that pervades the entire company — aside from their reliance on Dr. Bielby’s social-framework analysis that we have rejected. In a company of Wal-Mart’s size and geographical scope, it is quite unbelievable that all managers would exercise their discretion in a common way without some common direction. Respondents attempt to make that showing by means of statistical and anecdotal evidence, but their evidence falls well short.
The statistical evidence consists primarily of regression analyses performed by Dr. Richard Drogin, a statistician, and Dr. Marc Bendick, a labor economist. Drogin conducted his analysis region by region, comparing the number of women promoted into management positions with the percentage of women in the available pool of hourly workers. After considering regional and national data, Drogin concluded that “there are statistically significant disparities between men and women at Wal-Mart . . . [and] these disparities . . . can be explained only by gender discrimination.” 603 F. 3d, at 604 (internal quotation marks omitted). Bendick compared work-force data from Wal-Mart and competitive retailers and concluded that Wal-Mart “promotes a lower percentage of women than its competitors.” Ibid.
Even if they are taken at face value, these studies are insufficient to establish that respondents’ theory can be proved on a elasswide basis. In Falcon, we held that one named plaintiff’s experience of discrimination was insufficient to infer that “discriminatory treatment is typical of [the employer’s employment] practices.” 457 U. S., at 158. A similar failure of inference arises here. As Judge Ikuta observed in her dissent, “[information about disparities at the regional and national level does not establish the existence
There is another, more fundamental, respect in which respondents’ statistical proof fails. Even if it established (as it does not) a pay or promotion pattern that differs from the nationwide figures or the regional figures in all' of Wal-Mart’s 3,400 stores, that would still not demonstrate that commonality of issue exists. Some managers will claim that the availability of women, or qualified women, or interested women, in their stores’ area does not mirror the national or regional statistics. And almost all of them will claim to have been applying some sex-neutral, performance-based criteria — whose nature and effects will differ from store to store. In the landmark case of ours which held that giving discretion to lower-level supervisors can be the basis of Title VII liability under a disparate-impact theory, the plurality opinion conditioned that holding ón the corollary that merely proving that the discretionary system has produced a racial or sexual disparity is not enough. “The plaintiff must begin by identifying the specific employment practice that is challenged.” Watson, supra, at 994; accord, Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 U. S. 642, 656 (1989) (approving that statement), superseded by statute on other grounds, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-2(k). That is all the more necessary when a class of plaintiffs is sought to be certified. Other than the bare existence of delegated discretion, respondents have identified no “specific employment practice” — much less one that ties all their 1.5 million claims together. Merely showing that Wal-Mart’s policy of discretion has produced an overall sex-based disparity does not suffice.
In sum, we agree with Chief Judge Kozinski that the members of the class
“held a multitude of jobs, at different levels of Wal-Mart’s hierarchy, for variable lengths of time, in 3,400 stores, sprinkled acroos 50 statec, with a kaleidoscope of supervisors (male and female), subject to a variety of*360 regional policies that all differed .... Some thrived while others did poorly. They have little in common but their sex and this lawsuit.” 603 F. 3d, at 652 (dissenting opinion).
Ill
We also conclude that respondents’ claims for backpay were improperly certified under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2). Our opinion in Ticor Title Ins. Co. v. Brown, 511 U. S. 117, 121 (1994) (per curiam), expressed serious doubt about whether claims for monetary relief may be certified under that provision. We now hold that they may not, at least where (as here) the monetary relief is not incidental to the injunctive or declaratory relief.
A
Rule 23(b)(2) allows class treatment when “the party opposing the class has acted or refused to act on grounds that apply generally to the class, so that final injunctive relief or corresponding declaratory relief is appropriate respecting the class as a whole.” One possible reading of this provision is that it applies only to requests for such injunctive or declaratory relief and does not authorize the class certification of monetary claims at all. We need not reach that broader question in this case, because we think that, at a minimum, claims for individualized relief (like the backpay at issue here) do not satisfy the Rule. The key to the (b)(2) class is “the indivisible nature of the injunctive or declaratory remedy warranted — the notion that the conduct is such that it can be enjoined or declared unlawful only as to all of the class members or as to none of them.” Nagareda, 84 N. Y. U. L. Rev., at 132. In other words, Rule 23(b)(2) applies only when a single injunction or declaratory judgment would provide relief to each member of the class. It does not authorize class certification when each individual class member would be entitled to a different injunction or declaratory judgment against the defendant. Similarly, it does not
That interpretation accords with the history of the Rule. Because Rule 23 “stems from equity practice” that predated its codification, Amchem, Products, Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U. S. 591, 613 (1997), in determining its meaning we have previously looked to the historical models on which the Rule was based, Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp., 527 U. S. 815, 841-845 (1999). As we observed in Amchem, “[c]ivil rights cases against parties charged with unlawful, class-based discrimination are prime examples” of what (b)(2) is meant to capture. 521 U. S., at 614. In particular, the Rule reflects a series of decisions involving challenges to racial segregation — conduct that was remedied by a single classwide order. In none of the cases cited by the Advisory Committee as examples of (b)(2)’s antecedents did the plaintiffs combine any claim for individualized relief with their classwide injunction. See Advisory Committee’s Note, 28 U. S. C. App., pp. 1260-1261 (1964 ed., Supp. II) (citing cases); e. g., Potts v. Flax, 313 F. 2d 284, 289, n. 5 (CA5 1963); Brunson v. Board of Trustees of School Dist. No. 1, Clarendon Cty., 311 F. 2d 107, 109 (CA4 1962) (per curiam); Frasier v. Board of Trustees of Univ. of N. C., 134 F. Supp. 589, 593 (MDNC 1955) (three-judge court), aff’d, 350 U. S. 979 (1956) (per curiam).
Permitting the combination of individualized and class-wide relief in a (b)(2) class is also inconsistent with the structure of Rule 23(b). Classes certified trader (b)(1) and (b)(2) share the most traditional justifications for class treatment— that individual adjudications would be impossible or unworkable, as in a (b)(1) class,
Given that structure, we think it clear that individualized monetary claims belong in Rule 23(b)(3). The procedural protections attending the (b)(3) class — predominance, superiority, mandatory notice, and the right to opt out — are missing from (b)(2) not because the Rule considers them unnecessary, but because it considers them unnecessary to a (b)(2) class. When a class seeks an indivisible injunction benefiting all its members at once, there is no reason to undertake a case-specific inquiry into whether class issues predominate or whether class action is a superior method of adjudicating
B
Against that conclusion, respondents argue that their claims for backpay were appropriately certified as part of a class under Rule 23(b)(2) because those claims do not “predominate” over their requests for injunctive and declaratory relief. They rely upon the Advisory Committee’s statement that Rule 23(b)(2) “does not extend to cases in which the appropriate final relief relates exclusively or predominantly to money damages.” 28 U. S. C. App., p. 1260 (1964 ed., Supp. II) (emphasis added). The negative implication, they argue, is that it does extend to cases in which the appropriate final relief relates only partially and nonpredominantly to money damages. Of course it is the Rule itself, not the Advisory Committee’s description of it, that governs. And a mere negative inference does not in our view suffice to establish a disposition that has no basis in the Rule’s text, and that does obvious violence to the Rule’s structural features. The mere “predominance” of a proper (b)(2) injunctive claim
Respondents’ predominance test, moreover, creates perverse incentives for class representatives to place at risk potentially valid claims for monetary relief. In this case, for example, the named plaintiffs declined to include employees’ claims for compensatory damages in their complaint. That strategy of including only backpay claims made it more likely that monetary relief would not “predominate.” But it also created the possibility (if the predominance test were correct) that individual class members’ compensatory-damages claims would be precluded by litigation they had no power to hold themselves apart from. If it were determined, for example, that a particular class member is not entitled to backpay because her denial of increased pay or a promotion was not the product of discrimination, that employee might be collaterally estopped from independently seeking compensatory damages based on that same denial. That possibility underscores the need for plaintiffs with individual monetary claims to decide for themselves whether to tie their fates to the class representatives’ or go it alone — a choice Rule 23(b)(2) does not ensure that they have.
The predominance test would also require the District Court to reevaluate the roster of class members continually. The Ninth Circuit recognized the necessity for this when it concluded that those plaintiffs no longer employed by Wal-Mart lack standing to seek injunctive or declaratory relief against its employment practices. The Court of Appeals’ response to that difficulty, however, was not to eliminate all former employees from the certified class, but to eliminate only those who had left the company’s employ by the date
Finally, respondents argue that their backpay claims are appropriate for a (b)(2) class action because a backpay award is equitable in nature. The latter may be true, but it is irrelevant. The Rule does not speak of “equitable” remedies generally but of injunctions and declaratory judgments. As Title VII itself makes pellucidly clear, backpay is neither. See 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5(g)(2)(B)(i) and (ii) (distinguishing between declaratory and injunctive relief and the payment of “backpay,” see § 2000e~5(g)(2)(A)).
C
In Allison v. Citgo Petroleum Corp., 151 F. 3d 402, 415 (CA5 1998), the Fifth Circuit held that a (b)(2) class would permit the certification of monetary relief that is “incidental to requested injunctive or declaratory relief,” which it de
Contrary to the Ninth Circuit’s view, Wal-Mart is entitled to individualized determinations of each employee’s eligibility for backpay. Title VII includes a detailed remedial scheme. If a plaintiff prevails in showing that an employer has discriminated against him in violation of the statute, the court “may enjoin the respondent from engaging in such unlawful employment practice, and order such affirmative action as.may be appropriate, [including] reinstatement or hiring of employees, with or without back pay ... or any other equitable relief as the court deems appropriate.” §2000e-5(g)(1). But if the employer can show that it took an adverse employment action against an employee for any reason other than discrimination, the court cannot order the “hiring, reinstatement, or promotion of an individual as an employee, or the payment to him of any back pay.” § 2000e-5(g)(2)(A).
We have established a procedure for trying pattern-or-practice cases that gives effect to these statutory requirements. When the plaintiff seeks individual relief such as reinstatement or backpay after establishing a pattern or practice of discrimination, “a district court must usually conduct additional proceedings ... to determine the scope of individual relief.” Teamsters, 431 U. S., at 361. At this phase, the burden of proof will shift to the company, but it
The Court of Appeals believed that it was possible to replace such proceedings with Trial by Formula. A sample set of the class members would be selected, as to whom liability for sex discrimination and the backpay owing as a result would be determined in depositions supervised by a master. The percentage of claims determined to be valid would then be applied to the entire remaining class, and the number of (presumptively) valid claims thus derived would be multiplied by the average backpay award in the sample set to arrive at the entire class recovery — without further individualized proceedings. 603 F. 3d, at 626-627. We disapprove that novel project. Because the Rules Enabling Act forbids interpreting Rule 23 to “abridge, enlarge or modify any substantive right,” 28 U. S. C. § 2072(b); see Ortiz, 627 U. S., at 845, a class cannot be certified on the premise that Wal-Mart will not be entitled to litigate its statutory defenses to individual claims. And because the necessity of that litigation will prevent backpay from being “incidental” to the classwide injunction, respondents’ class could not be certified even assuming, arguendo, that “incidental” monetary relief can be awarded to a 23(b)(2) class.
* * *
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
The complaint included seven named plaintiffs, but only three remain part of the certified class as narrowed by the Court of Appeals.
Rule 23(b)(1) allows a class to be maintained where “prosecuting separate actions by or against individual class members would create a risk of” either “(A) inconsistent or varying adjudications,” or “(B) adjudications... that, as a practical matter, would be dispositive of the interests of the other members not parties to the individual adjudications or would substantially impair or impede their ability to protect their interests.” Rule 23(b)(3) states that a class may be maintained where “questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members,” and a class action would be “superior to other available methods for fairly and efficiently adjudicating the controversy.” The applicability of these provisions to the plaintiff class is not before us.
The District Court excluded backpay claims based on promotion opportunities that had not been publicly posted, for the reason that no applicant data could exist for such positions. 222 F. R. D. 137,182 (ND Cal. 2004). It also decided to afford class members notice of the action and the right to opt out of the class with respect to respondents’ punitive-damages claim. Id, at 173.
To enable that result, the Court of Appeals trimmed the (b)(2) class in two ways: First, it remanded that part of the certification order which included respondents' punitive-damages claim in the (b)(2) class, so that the District Court might consider whether that might cause the monetary relief to predominate. 603 F. 3d, at 621. Second, it accepted in part Wal-Mart’s argument that since class members whom it no longer employed had no standing to seek injunctive or declaratory relief, as to them monetary claims must predominate. It excluded from the certified class “those putative class members who were no longer Wal-Mart employees at the time Plaintiffs’ complaint was filed,” id., at 623 (emphasis added).
We have previously stated in this context that “[t]he commonality and typicality requirements of Rule 23(a) tend to merge. Both sorvo as guido-posts for determining whether under the particular circumstances maintenance of a class action is economical and whether the named plaintiff’s claim and the class claims are so interrelated that the interests of the class members will be fairly and adequately protected in their absence. Those requirements therefore also tend to merge with the adequacy-of-representation requirement, although the latter requirement also raises concerns about the competency of class counsel and conflicts of interest.” General Telephone Co. of Southwest v. Falcon, 457 U. S. 147, 157-158, n. 13 (1982). In light of our disposition of the commonality question, however, it is unnecessary to resolve whether respondents have satisfied the typicality and adequate-representation requirements of Rule 23(a).
A statement in one of our prior eases, Eisen v. Carlisle & Jacquelin, 417 U. S. 156, 177 (1974), is sometimes mistakenly cited to the contrary: “We find nothing in either the language or history of Rule 23 that gives a court any authority to conduct a preliminary inquiry into the merits of a suit in order to determine whether it may be maintained as a class action.” But in that ease, the judge had conducted a preliminary inquiry into the merits of a suit, not in order to determine the propriety of certification under Rules 23(a) and (b) (he had already done that, see id., at 165), but in order to shift the cost of notice required by Rule 23(c)(2) from the plaintiff to the defendants. To the extent the quoted statement goes beyond the permissibility of a merits inquiry for any other pretrial purpose, it is the purest dictum and is contradicted by our other cases.
Perhaps the most common example of considering a merits question at the Rule 23 stage arises in class-action suits for securities fraud. Rule 23(b)(3)’s requirement that “questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members” would often be an insuperable barrier to class certification, since each of the individual investors would have to prove reliance on the alleged misrepresentation. But the problem dissipates if the plaintiffs can establish the applicability of the so-called “fraud on the market” presumption, which says that all traders who purchase stock in an efficient market are presumed to have relied on the accuracy of a company’s public statements. To invoke this presumption, the plaintiffs seeking 23(b)(3) certification must prove that their shares were traded on an efficient market, Erica P. John Fund, Inc. v. Halliburton Co., 563 U. S. 804, 809 (2011), an issue they will surely have to prove again at trial in order to make out their case on the merits.
In a pattern-or-practice case, the plaintiff tries to “establish by a preponderance of the evidence that . . . discrimination was the company’s standard operating procedure!,] the regular rather than the unusual practice.” Teamsters v. United States, 431 U. S. 324, 336 (1977); see also Franks v. Bowman Transp. Co., 424 U. S. 747, 772 (1976). If he succeeds, that showing will support a rebuttable inference that all class members were victims of the discriminatory practice, and will justify “an award of prospective relief,” such as “an injunctive order against continuation of the discriminatory practice.” Teamsters, supra, at 361.
Bielby’s conclusions in this ease have elicited criticism from the very scholars on whose conclusions he relies for his social-framework analysis. See Monahan, Walker, & Mitchell, Contextual Evidence of Gender Discrimination: The Ascendance of “Social Frameworks,” 94 Va. L. Rev. 1715, 1747 (2008) (“[Bielby’s] research into conditions and behavior at Wal-Mart did not meet the standards expected of social scientific research into stereotyping and discrimination”); id., at 1745,1747 (“[A] social framework necessarily contains only general statements about reliable patterns of relations among variables . . . and goes no further. .. . Dr. Bielby claimed to present a social framework, but he testified about social facts specific to Wal-Mart”); id., at 1747-1748 (“Dr. Bielby’s report provides no verifiable method for measuring and testing any of the variables that were crucial to his conclusions and reflects nothing more than Dr. Bielby’s ‘expert judgment’ about how general stereotyping research applied to all managers across all of Wal-Mart’s stores nationwide for the multi-year class period”).
The dissent says that we have adopted “a rule that a discrimination claim, if accompanied by anecdotes, must supply them in numbers proportionate to the size of the class. ” Post, at 371, n. 4 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). That is not quite accurate. A discrimina-
For this reason, there is no force to the diosent’o attempt to diotinguiah Falcon on the ground that in that ease there were “ ‘no common questions of law or fact’ between the claimo of the lead plaintiff and the applicant class,” post, at 375, n. 7 (quoting 457 U. S., at 162 (Burger, C. J., concurring in part and dissenting in part)). Here also there is nothing to unite all of the plaintiffs’ claims, since (contrary to the dissent’s contention, post, at 375, n, 7) the same employment practicoo do not “touch and concern all members of the class.”
Rulo 23(b)(1) applies where separate actions by or against individual class members would ereato a risk of “establiflh[ing] incompatible stand ards of conduct for the party opposing the class,” Rule 23(b)(1)(A), such as “whore the party is obliged by law to treat the members of the class alike,” Amchem Products, Inc. v. Windsor, 521 U. S. 591, 614 (1997), or whoro individual adjudications “as a practical matter, would bo dispositive
Concurrence in Part
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The class in this case, I agree with the Court, should not have been certified under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2). The plaintiffs, alleging discrimination in violation
Whether the class the plaintiffs describe meets the specific requirements of Rule 23(b)(3) is not before the Court, and I would reserve that matter for consideration and decision on remand.
I — I
<J
Rule 23(a)(2) establishes a preliminary requirement for maintaining a class action: “[T]here are questions of law or fact common to the class.”
A “question” is ordinarily understood to be “[a] subject or point open to controversy.” American Heritage Dictionary 1483 (3d ed. 1992). See also Black’s Law Dictionary 1366 (9th ed. 2009) (defining “question of fact” as “[a] disputed issue to be resolved . . . [at] trial” and “question of law” as “[a]n issue to be decided by the judge”). Thus, a “question” “common to the class” must be a dispute, either of fact or of law, the resolution of which will advance the determination of the class members’ claims.
B
The District Court, recognizing that “one significant issue common to the class may be sufficient to warrant certification,” 222 F. R. D. 137, 145 (ND Cal. 2004), found that the plaintiffs easily met that test. Absent an error of law or an abuse of discretion, an appellate tribunal has no warrant to upset the District Court’s finding of commonality. See Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U. S. 682, 703 (1979) (“[M]ost issues arising under Rule 23 ... [are] committed in the first instance to the discretion of the district court.”).
Women fill 70 percent of the hourly jobs in the retailer’s stores but make up only “33 percent of management employees.” 222 F. R. D., at 146. “[T]he higher one looks in the organization the lower the percentage of women.” Id., at 155. The plaintiffs’ “largely uncontested descriptive statistics” also show that women working in the company’s stores “are paid less than men in every region” and “that the salary gap widens over time even for men and women hired into the same jobs at the same time.” Ibid.] cf. Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 550 U. S. 618, 643 (2007) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).
The District Court identified “systems for . . . promoting in-store employees” that were “sufficiently similar across regions and stores” to conclude that “the manner in which
Wal-Mart’s compensation policies also operate uniformly across stores, the District Court found. The retailer leaves open a $2 band for every position’s hourly pay rate. Wal-Mart provides- no standards or criteria for setting wages within that band, and thus does nothing to counter unconscious bias on the part of supervisors. See id., at 146-147.
Wal-Mart’s supervisors do not make their discretionary decisions in a vacuum. The District Court reviewed means Wal-Mart used to maintain a “carefully constructed . . . corporate culture,” such as frequent meetings to reinforce the common way of thinking, regular transfers of managers between stores to ensure uniformity throughout the company, monitoring of stores “on a close and constant basis,” and “Wal-Mart TV,” “broadcas[t]... into all stores.” Id., at 151— 153 (internal quotation marks omitted).
The plaintiffs’ evidence, including class members’ tales of their own experiences,
Finally, the plaintiffs presented an expert’s appraisal to show that the pay and promotions disparities at Wal-Mart “can be explained only by gender discrimination and not by . . . neutral variables.” 222 F. R. D., at 155. Using regression analyses, their expert, Richard Drogin, controlled for factors including, inter alia, job performance, length of time with the company, and the store where an employee worked. Id., at 159.
C
The District Court’s identification of a common question, whether Wal-Mart’s pay and promotions policies gave rise to unlawful discrimination, was hardly infirm. The practice of delegating to supervisors large discretion to make personnel decisions, uncontrolled by formal standards, has long been known to have the potential to produce disparate effects. Managers, like all humankind, may be prey to biases
The' plaintiffs
We have held that “discretionary employment practices” can give rise to Title VII claims, not only when such practices are motivated by discriminatory intent but also when they produce discriminatory results. See Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust, 487 U. S. 977, 988, 991 (1988). But see ante, at 357 (“[Pjroving that [a] discretionary system has produced a . . . disparity is not enough.”). In Watson, as here, an employer had given its managers large authority over promotions. An employee sued the bank under Title VII, alleging that the “discretionary promotion system”
Aware of “the problem of subconscious stereotypes and prejudices,” we held that the employer’s “undisciplined system of subjective decisionmaking” was an “employment practic[e]” that “may be analyzed under the disparate impact approach.” Id., at 990-991. See also Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio, 490 U. S. 642, 657 (1989) (recognizing “the use of ‘subjective decision making’” as an “employment prac-tie[e]” subject to disparate-impact attack).
The plaintiffs’ allegations state claims of gender discrimination in the form of biased decisionmaking in both pay and promotions. The evidence reviewed by the District Court adequately demonstrated that resolving those claims would necessitate examination of particular policies and practices alleged to affect, adversely and globally, women employed at Wal-Mart’s stores. Rule 23(a)(2), setting a necessary but not a sufficient criterion for class-action certification, demands nothing further.
II
A'
The Court gives no credence to the key dispute common to the class: whether Wal-Mart’s discretionary pay and promotion policies are discriminatory. See ante, at 349 (“Reciting” questions like “Is [giving managers discretion over pay] an unlawful employment practice?” “is not sufficient to obtain class certification.”). “What matters,” the Court asserts, “is not the raising of common ‘questions,’” but whether there are “[dissimilarities within the proposed
The Court blends Rule 23(a)(2)’s threshold criterion with the more demanding criteria of Rule 23(b)(3), and thereby elevates the (a)(2) inquiry so that it is no longer “easily satisfied,” 5 J. Moore et al., Moore’s Federal Practice §23.23[2], p. 23-72 (3d ed. 2011).
Because Rule 23(a) is also a prerequisite for Rule 23(b)(1) and Rule 23(b)(2) classes, the Court’s “dissimilarities” position is far reaching. Individual differences should not bar a Rule 23(b)(1) or Rule 23(b)(2) class, so long as the Rule 23(a) threshold is met. See id., at 623, n. 19 (Rule 23(b)(1)(B) “does not have a predominance requirement”); Yamasaki, 442 U. S., at 701 (Rule 23(b)(2) action in which the Court noted that “[i]t is unlikely that differences in the factual background of each claim will affect the outcome of the legal
B
The “dissimilarities” approach leads the Court to train its attention on what distinguishes individual class members, rather than on what unites them. Given the lack of standards for pay and promotions, the majority says, “demonstrating the invalidity of one manager’s use of discretion will do nothing to demonstrate the invalidity of another’s.” Ante, at 356-356.
Wal-Mart’s delegation of discretion over pay and promotions is a policy uniform throughout all stores. The very nature of discretion is that people will exercise it in various ways. A system of delegated discretion, Watson held, is a practice actionable under Title YII when it produces discriminatory outcomes. 487 U. S., at 990-991; see supra, at 373-374. A finding that Wal-Mart’s pay and promotions practices in fact violate the law would be the first step in the usual order of proof for plaintiffs seeking individual remedies for companywide discrimination. Teamsters v. United States, 431 U. S. 324, 359 (1977); see Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405, 415-423 (1975). That each individual employee’s unique circumstances will ultimately determine whether she is entitled to backpay or damages, § 2000e-5(g)(2)(A) (barring backpay if a plaintiff “was refused . . . advancement ... for any reason other than discrimination”), should not factor into the Rule 23(a)(2) determination.
The Court errs in importing a “dissimilarities” notion suited to Rule 23(b)(3) into the Rule 23(a) commonality inquiry. I therefore cannot join Part II of the Court’s opinion.
The plaintiffs requested Rule 23(b)(3) certification as an alternative, should their request for (b)(2) certification fail. Plaintiffs’ Motion for Class Certification in No. 3:01-cv-02252-CRB (ND Cal.), Doc. 99, p. 55.
Rule 23(a) lists three other threshold requirements for class-action certification: “(1) the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable”; “(3) the claims or defenses of the representative parties are typical of the claims or defenses of the class; and (4) the representative parties will fairly and adequately protect the interests of the class.” The numerosity requirement is clearly met and Wal-Mart does not contend otherwise. As the Court does not reach the typicality and adequacy requirements, ante, at 349, n. 5,1 will not discuss them either, but will simply record my agreement with the District Court’s resolution of those issues.
The Court suggests Rule 23(a)(2) must mean more than it says. See ante, at 349-350. If the word “questions” were taken literally, the majority asserts, plaintiffs could pass the Rule 23(a)(2) bar by “[r]eciting . . . questions” like “Do all of us plaintiffs indeed work for Wal-Mart?” Ante, at 349. Sensibly road, however, the word “questions” moans disputed is sues, not any utterance crafted in the grammatical form of a question.
The majority purports to derive from Teamsters v. United States, 431 U. S. 324 (1977), a rule that a discrimination claim, if accompanied by anecdotes, must supply them in numbers proportionate to the size of the class. Ante, at 358. Teamsters, the Court acknowledges, 3ee ante, at 358, n. 9, instructs that statistical evidence alone may suffice, 431 U. S., at 339; that decision eon hardly be said to establish a numerical floor before anecdotal evidence can be taken into account.
The Court asserts that Drogin showed only average differences at the “regional and national level” between male and female employees. Ante, at 356 (internal quotation marks omitted). In fact, his regression analy-ses showed there were disparities within stores. The majority’s contention to the contrary reflects only an arcane disagreement about statistical method — which the District Court resolved in the plaintiffs’ favor. 222 F. R. D. 137, 157 (ND Cal. 2004). Appellate review is no occasion to disturb a trial court’s handling of factual disputes of this order.
An example vividly illustrates how subjective decisionmaking can be a vehicle for discrimination. Performing in symphony orchestras was long a male preserve. Goldin & Rouse, Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on Female Musicians, 90 Am. Eeon. Rev. 715, 715-716 (2000). In the 1970’s orchestras began hiring musicians through auditions open to all comers. Id., at 716. Reviewers were to judge applicants solely on their musical abilities, yet subconscious bias led some reviewers to disfavor women. Orchestras that permitted reviewers to see the applicants hired far fewer female musicians than orchestras that conducted blind auditions, in which candidates played behind opaque screens. Id., at 738.
Tho Court placos considorablo weight on General Telephone Co. of Southwest v. Falcon, 457 U. S. 147 (1982). Ante, at 352-355. That case has little relevance to the question before the Court today. The lead plaintiff in Falcon alleged discrimination evidenced by the company’s failure to promote him and other Mcxican-American employees and failure to hire Mexican-American applicants. There were “no common questions of law or fact” between the elaimo of the lead plaintiff and the applicant class. 457 U. S., at 162 (Burger, C. J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (emphasis added). The plaintiff-employee alleged that the defendant-employer had discriminated against him intentionally. The applicant clase elaimo, by contract, were “advanced under the ‘adverse impact’ the ory,” ibid., appropriate for facially neutral practices. “[T]he only commonality [wa]s that respondent io a Mexiean-American and he seeks to represent a class of Mexican-Americans.” Ibid. Here the same practices touch and concern all members of the class.
“A class action may be maintained if Rule 23(a) is satisfied and if:
“(1) prosecuting separate actions by or against individual class mem bers would create a risk of... inconsistent or varying adjudications... [or] adjudications with respect to individual class members that, as a practical matter, would be dispositive of the interests of the other members . . . ;
“(2) the party opposing the class has acted or refused to act on grounds that apply generally to the class, so that final injunctive relief..; io appro priate respecting the class as a whole; or
Cf. supra, at 369 (Rule 23(a) commonality prerequisite satisfied by “[e]ven a single question ... common to the members of the class” (quoting Nagareda, The Preexistence Principle and the Structure of the Class Action, 103 Colum. L. Rev. 149,176, n. 110 (2003)).